1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control program distributing method which distributes a control program from a center apparatus as a communication equipment manufacturer that manufacturers communication equipment, such as private branch exchanges and button telephone sets, to a user having communication equipment through the use of a communication system and sets the control program in the communication equipment of the user, a center apparatus that provides transmission control of the control program, a user apparatus provided with the communication equipment, and a program recorded on a recording medium in the user apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In offices, schools, business places, and so on, a large number of pieces of communication equipment, such as electronic private branch exchanges, button telephone sets, etc., is used. When purchasing these pieces of communication equipment, users will generally select communication equipment having functions required at that time built in.
After commencement of use of such communication equipment, however, it sometimes becomes necessary to makes additions to the functions of communication equipment according to augmentation of the staff, changing of the range of business, or the like or to remove unnecessary functions. In such a case, according to a conventional practice, the user will request manufacturer's customer center to make additions to the functions of communication equipment. Accordingly, a customer engineer will travel on business to the place where the communication equipment is installed to perform there the work of adding desired functions to the communication equipment.
With such a method, however, the greater part of the work from acceptance of the request made by the user for changing the functions until the functions are changed depends on the human work by the customer engineer; thus, it takes a lot of time and labor from when a request is made by the user for changing the functions until changing of the functions is completed.
In recent years, a system has been proposed which distributes a control program to communication equipment over a communication network to allow it to perform arbitrary functions (Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-087422). According to this system, additions or changes to the functions of communication equipment can be made without the need for a manufacturer's customer engineer to go to the place where the communication equipment is installed.
With this system, however, a programmer in the communication equipment manufacturer has to prepare a control program to meet the user's requirements. However, since the environmental requirements vary from user to user, the preparation of the control program requires investigation of the user and consideration of the setting environment of the communication equipment. This takes a lot of time and involves a high cost. Further, the burden on the programmer is great; that is, the programmer is required of experience and expert knowledge.
On the other hand, the user will need expert knowledge to understand the contents of the control program distributed from the communication equipment manufacturer and consequently take a lot of time and labor to set the control program in the communication equipment.